In plain words: A survey compares five ways of updating a network's settings—full-data updates, small batches, momentum, Adam's adaptive step sizes, and Lion's sign-based updates—with tuning tips for each. It turns them into one guide for picking the right updater for different model sizes and jobs.
Abstract
Focusing on the practical configuration needs of optimization algorithms in deep learning, this article concentrates on five major algorithms: SGD, Mini-batch SGD, Momentum, Adam, and Lion. It systematically analyzes the core advantages, limitations, and key practical recommendations of each algorithm. The research aims to gain an in-depth understanding of these algorithms and provide a standardized reference for the reasonable selection, parameter tuning, and performance improvement of optimization algorithms in both academic research and engineering practice, helping to solve optimization challenges in different scales of models and various training scenarios.
Deng Fucheng, Wang Wanjie, Gong Ao, Wang Xiaoqi, Wang Fan
arXiv:2511.20725 · cs.LG, cs.AI · submitted Nov 25, 2025
abstract · pdf · html
I might be AI-brained but whenever I read the word "comprehensively" in a scientific paper, I get the feeling that it was written by AI.